Privacy Policy
Sayoo Privacy Policy
Effective date: 13 October 2026 Last updated: 13 October 2026 Operator: Zhang Zhixing
Sayoo is a translation service that translates speech, text and photos. This policy covers the Sayoo iPhone app (including its screen-broadcast extension), the Sayoo web app (app.sayoo.me) and the Sayoo website (sayoo.ai and sayoo.me). It explains what information we handle, where it goes, how long we keep it and what choices you have. Once the Sayoo desktop app is released, this policy applies to it too; the parts below about the desktop app apply when you use it. "Sayoo", "we" and "us" refer to the Sayoo service, operated by Zhang Zhixing.
Sayoo has two modes. In offline mode, speech recognition and translation run on your iPhone. In cloud mode, our servers and our AI provider do that work. AI summaries always use the cloud. Wherever the difference matters, we point it out. Offline mode is available only in the iPhone app. The web and desktop apps always use cloud mode, but text in images is still recognized on your device (see Section 2).
The web and desktop apps share your account and daily free allowance with the iPhone app. Wherever the apps differ, we point that out too.
Sayoo is currently free. Cloud features have a daily free usage limit, which resets the next day once used up. We don't currently offer any paid purchases. If we introduce paid features in the future, we will update this policy before they launch.
At a glance
- In offline mode (iPhone app only), your content stays on your phone. Speech recognition and translation run entirely on your iPhone, and your audio, text and translations are not sent to us.
- Cloud mode sends only what's needed to translate. Your speech or other audio, your text or the words recognized in a photo pass through Sayoo's server in Hong Kong (Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong) to the Singapore region of Alibaba Cloud Model Studio for processing. Data is stored in Singapore, and model inference runs on Alibaba Cloud nodes outside the Chinese mainland. Once a request is finished, we don't keep the content on our servers, except that text, photo-text and summary requests are held in encrypted form for about 5 minutes so you can recover the result if your connection drops. The web and desktop apps always use cloud mode.
- We tell you first, then send. In the iPhone app, before any content is sent to the cloud for the first time, Sayoo shows a notice: your content passes through Sayoo's server in Hong Kong and is processed by Alibaba Cloud Model Studio in its Singapore region. What is sent: speech recorded after you tap to start (including audio of other apps you choose to translate), text you type or paste, text recognized on your device from photos (the photo itself is not uploaded), and the history text you select when you create an AI summary. It is used only to provide the recognition, translation, spoken translations and summaries you ask for, never for advertising. Nothing is sent until you tap "Agree and Continue", and you can review, withdraw or give consent again in Settings › Cloud AI Processing. Offline mode sends no content and doesn't need this consent.
- Photos are read on your device. Text in a photo is recognized on your phone or computer, or in your browser. Only the recognized text is sent for cloud translation, never the photo itself.
- Your history lives on your device, not on our servers. History on your iPhone may be included in iPhone backups, and desktop and web app history may be included in computer backups. Web app history is kept in your browser: clearing the site data for app.sayoo.me deletes it, and your browser may also clear it on its own, so export anything important.
- No ads, no tracking. The iPhone, web and desktop apps contain no advertising, analytics or crash-reporting SDKs, the web app doesn't use cookies, we don't use your information for advertising, and we never sell it.
- If you've signed in, you can delete your account from inside the iPhone app at any time. Accounts that use an email address and password can also be deleted in the web or desktop app. If you sign in with Apple, you currently need to delete your account in the iPhone app or by contacting us (see Section 7).
1. Information we collect
1.1 Account information
In the iPhone app and the web app, you can sign in with Apple, or register and sign in with an email address and password. Google sign-in isn't available at the moment. We don't currently offer use without an account, and cloud features require you to sign in.
- Sign in with Apple. We receive the unique user ID that Apple assigns for Sayoo, your email address (Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real one), and, if you choose to share it, your name. Your account is tied to the Apple user ID, never to your email address. We use this information only to create, sign in to and secure your Sayoo account, never for advertising. When you sign in with Apple in the web app, Sayoo doesn't ask Apple for your name or email address.
- Email and password. Your email address, an optional nickname and your password. We store the password only as a salted one-way hash (scrypt), never in readable form. We don't verify your email address when you register, and there is currently no way to reset a forgotten password, so please keep your password safe.
- Account ID. We create a random account ID for your account. Sign-in tokens are random, and our server stores them as one-way hashes. Where a token must be returned again (for example, when a sign-in refresh is retried) we keep an encrypted copy instead.
1.2 What you translate in cloud mode
In cloud mode, we receive the content you ask us to process:
- Your voice: microphone audio, captured only after you start (for example, by tapping or clicking Start, holding to talk, or pressing a shortcut in the desktop app), including speech in conversation and earphone modes.
- Audio from other apps (iPhone app): if you start Sayoo's screen broadcast to translate another app, only that app's sound is sent. Screen video and microphone samples from the broadcast are discarded on your phone without being processed.
- Audio playing on your computer or in your browser (desktop and web apps): if you choose "System audio" in the desktop app, or share a tab or screen in the web app and choose to share its audio in your browser's sharing dialog, only the sound is sent. The screen image the system provides with it is discarded on your device straight away, without being processed. If you choose "Microphone + system audio", your microphone and the system sound are mixed and sent together.
- Text you type or paste.
- Audio or video files you choose to transcribe (web and desktop apps): the file is decoded on your device and only its sound is sent. The file itself, its name and any video are never uploaded.
- Text in photos: the text blocks recognized on your device. In the iPhone app, blocks that contain no letters or characters of any language, such as prices or dates and times written only in digits, stay on your phone. In the web and desktop apps, blocks made up only of digits and symbols common in prices and dates also stay on your device when translating; however, if you ask for a cloud summary of a saved photo translation, the summary includes all the text recognized in that photo. The photo itself is never uploaded.
- Text you choose to summarize (optional): sent only after you agree to cloud processing, and only the text you selected. Records created in offline mode in the iPhone app are included only if you explicitly allow it. The web and desktop apps send only a record's original text, not its translation. If you have turned on "Auto summary" in the web or desktop app (it's off by default) and left "Remember" selected when you gave consent (it's selected by default), the original text of each live translation or audio or video file transcription is sent automatically when it ends.
In return, we send back transcripts, translations and, in spoken modes, translated speech generated in the cloud. Content is passed to Alibaba Cloud Model Studio without your name, email address or account ID. We don't use your voice to identify you or to create a voiceprint.
1.3 Usage records
To apply the daily free usage limit, we keep a usage record for each cloud request, linked to your account: the feature used, start and end times, status, the seconds of audio, characters or number of uses processed, and any error code. These records do not contain what you said or wrote, and they are not used for analytics or advertising. We also keep:
- request IDs (so the same request is never counted twice);
- daily free-allowance counters;
- the languages you chose for screen-broadcast sessions;
- your consent choices, if you use summaries.
1.4 Technical information
- We use your IP address (and, for email sign-in, your email address) briefly to limit repeated sign-in and session-refresh requests. These counters expire after about five minutes.
- Our API service does not keep access logs and is designed not to log what you send. Its error logs record technical details only, such as error codes.
- The first time you recognize text in photos with a given source language in the web or desktop app, your device downloads the photo text recognition models it needs from jsDelivr (see Section 2). jsDelivr receives standard connection information, such as your IP address, and the languages of the models requested, but never your image or its text.
- If you use the desktop app: it has a "Server (advanced)" setting in Settings → About that you normally don't need to change. If you point it at a different server, your sign-in credentials and the content you translate go to that server, and we have no control over how it handles them.
1.5 When you contact us
If you email us feedback from the iPhone app, we receive your email address, the feature category in the subject line and whatever you write. You can choose to add your app version, iOS version, device type and interface language, and you can edit or remove them before sending. The app never attaches photos, recordings, history or account details. You can't yet send feedback from inside the web and desktop apps.
2. What stays on your device
- Offline mode (iPhone app). Speech recognition (Whisper) and translation (Hy-MT) run on your iPhone. Your audio, text and translations are not sent to us. Offline mode is currently free, and you turn it on with the on-device switch at the top of the home screen. The models it needs total about 1.7 GB. The app tells you the size before downloading and asks first if you're on a cellular connection; once downloaded, they work without an internet connection. Some languages are available only in cloud mode. If something can't be done offline, Sayoo tells you rather than quietly switching to the cloud. Offline models are downloaded from Hugging Face; as with any download, Hugging Face receives standard connection information such as your IP address. Model files are integrity-checked on your phone and excluded from device backups.
- Photo text recognition. In the iPhone app, text is recognized with Apple's Vision framework on your phone, in both modes. The original photo stays on your device. When you pick an image from your library, iOS shares only the photo you select. In the web and desktop apps, text is recognized in your browser or on your computer by the open-source tesseract.js, and the original image also stays on your device. You can choose, drag in or paste an image, and Sayoo reads only the image you provide. The first time you recognize text with a given source language, the photo text recognition models it needs are downloaded from jsDelivr and kept on your device (English and Simplified Chinese when the source language is "Detect language"; for any other language except English, that language and English). As with any download, jsDelivr receives standard connection information such as your IP address.
- History (iPhone app). Saved translations, photos (original and thumbnail) and summaries are stored in a database on your phone. Saving is on by default. You can turn off Settings → Save translation history, delete records, or export them through the share sheet. Sayoo doesn't upload or sync your history to our servers. Depending on your iPhone settings, it may be included in device backups such as iCloud Backup.
- History (web and desktop apps). Results from live translation (including audio or video file transcription), conversations, text translation and photo translation are saved automatically in your browser or on your computer. This includes the original text, translations, a copy of each image (which may be downscaled and compressed) and summaries, but never audio recordings; a file transcription is titled with the name of the file you chose. History is shown separately for each account, but all accounts in a browser or on a computer share one local database, and their history isn't separately encrypted. Automatic saving can't currently be turned off. You can delete individual records, export a record as a TXT, Markdown, SRT or JSON file, and export or clear all of this account's records in Settings → Data & privacy; the JSON file from "Export all records" includes the image copies. Web app history is kept in your browser's storage for app.sayoo.me. Clearing that site's data deletes it, and your browser may also clear it on its own (see Section 6); like other browser data, it may be included in computer backups. Desktop app history is kept in the app's data folder (on a Mac, ~/Library/Application Support/Sayoo) and may be included in computer backups such as Time Machine. Sayoo doesn't upload or sync this history to our servers. The only exception is cloud summaries: when you ask for one, or when "Auto summary" runs at the end of a live translation or file transcription, the record's original text is sent as described in Section 1.2.
- Interrupted requests (iPhone app). If a cloud text request is interrupted, the app keeps a copy of it on your phone (excluded from backups) until it can recover the result.
- Reading aloud on your device. In the iPhone app, when Sayoo reads a translation aloud using your phone's built-in iOS voices, the speech is generated on your device. In cloud spoken modes, the translated speech is generated in the cloud instead (see Section 1.2). When you click a read-aloud button to hear a record or translation in the web or desktop app (including "Play again" in conversations), Sayoo uses the speech feature of your browser or operating system and doesn't send the text to our servers; some browsers may provide these voices online through the browser maker, under its own privacy policy. The translated speech played automatically when "Simultaneous interpretation" is on in live translation, or when "Speak" is on in conversations, is generated in the cloud.
- Sign-in credentials. In the iPhone app, they are stored in the iOS Keychain, limited to this device and never synced. The web app keeps them in your browser's local storage for app.sayoo.me and removes them when you sign out. The desktop app encrypts them with the macOS Keychain and keeps them in its data folder. If system encryption isn't available, the desktop app doesn't save them, and you'll need to sign in again the next time you open it. Credentials are never synced between devices.
- Diagnostics (iPhone app). The app keeps small local logs of technical events (such as camera or audio states) to help fix problems. They contain no translation content, photos or account data, and are never uploaded.
- Settings. The web and desktop apps keep your preferences on your device, such as interface language, theme, usual languages, your chosen microphone and output device, shortcuts and the ID of any summary consent you chose to remember. The consent itself is also recorded on our servers (see Section 1.3). The desktop app also keeps the server address (only if you changed it) and the position of the floating captions window. Apart from the summary consent, these settings stay on your device and are normally removed only when you clear the site data for app.sayoo.me or delete the desktop app's data folder. Your browser may also clear web app data on its own (see Section 6), and withdrawing summary consent removes the consent ID stored on your device.
3. How we use information
We use information to:
- provide the translation, speech, photo and summary features you ask for;
- create and secure your account and keep you signed in;
- track the daily free allowance, and avoid counting the same request twice;
- prevent abuse, such as repeated sign-in attempts;
- recover a result after a dropped connection;
- carry out account deletion and answer your support requests.
We do not sell or rent your information, show ads, track you across other companies' apps or websites, or use your content to train AI models.
Legal bases (EEA, UK and similar laws). We rely on four legal bases:
- Contract. To provide the features you use, including processing your voice, text and photo text when you ask us to.
- Legitimate interests. To keep Sayoo secure and prevent abuse.
- Consent. For example, the consent we ask for before content is first sent to the cloud, and consent for cloud summaries. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Legal obligations. Where the law requires processing.
4. Who we share information with
We share information only as needed to run Sayoo:
- Alibaba Cloud Model Studio processes cloud-mode content (speech recognition, translation, translated speech, photo text and summaries) on our behalf. Content passes through Sayoo's server in Hong Kong (Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong) to the Singapore region of Alibaba Cloud Model Studio for processing. Data is stored in Singapore, and model inference runs on Alibaba Cloud nodes outside the Chinese mainland. We use this service under Alibaba Cloud's service agreement.
- Hosting. Sayoo's servers run on Alibaba Cloud in Hong Kong.
- Apple provides Sign in with Apple (in the iPhone, web and desktop apps). If you have chosen in iOS to share analytics with app developers, Apple may also give us crash reports and aggregated statistics.
- Hugging Face hosts the offline model files you download in the iPhone app.
- jsDelivr serves the photo text recognition models that the web and desktop apps download. It receives standard connection information, such as your IP address, and the language requested.
- Cloudflare hosts our website at sayoo.ai and receives the standard connection information your browser sends to load a page (see Section 11).
- Legal and safety reasons. We may disclose information when required by law, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our users, the public or Sayoo.
- Business transfers. If Sayoo is reorganized, merged or sold, information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will require the recipient to protect it in line with this policy, and we will tell you before your information becomes subject to a different policy.
Apple, Hugging Face, jsDelivr and Cloudflare handle information under their own privacy policies.
5. International data transfers
Sayoo's servers are in Hong Kong. To provide cloud features, your content passes through Sayoo's server in Hong Kong (Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong) to the Singapore region of Alibaba Cloud Model Studio for processing. Data is stored in Singapore, and model inference runs on Alibaba Cloud nodes outside the Chinese mainland. Sign-in involves Apple, offline models for the iPhone app are downloaded from Hugging Face, photo text recognition models for the web and desktop apps are downloaded from jsDelivr, and our website at sayoo.ai is hosted by Cloudflare. These companies may process information in the United States and elsewhere. Data protection laws in these places may differ from those where you live. We give each provider only what it needs, always over encrypted connections.
6. How long we keep information
| Information | How long we keep it | |---|---| | Account profile, sign-in identities and account ID | Until you delete your account | | Sign-in sessions | Sign in with Apple: access tokens are valid for up to 15 minutes and can be renewed for up to 30 days after sign-in. Email sign-ins are valid for up to 30 days. Signing out ends the session. In the web and desktop apps, if our server can't be reached when you sign out, you're still signed out on that device, but the session on our server stays valid until it expires; you can sign in again and choose "Sign out everywhere" in Settings → Account. Hashed records of past sessions are kept until you delete your account. | | Live speech in cloud mode (audio, transcripts, translated speech) | Not stored on our servers; passed through in real time | | Text, photo-text and summary requests | Your submitted text and its result are kept, encrypted, for about 5 minutes after the request completes; nothing is stored while it is in progress. We also keep a record of each request until you delete your account: its ID, status and a one-way hash of the request (used to stop the same request ID being reused for different content). | | Usage records | Until you delete your account | | Error logs | Record technical details such as error codes only, never your content | | Summary consent | 1 hour; if you chose to remember it (in the web and desktop apps, by leaving "Remember" selected, as it is by default), until you withdraw it or delete your account | | Sign-in rate-limit counters | About 5 minutes | | Deletion request records (see Section 7) | Contain only a hash of the request ID and its status, never your account profile; not automatically deleted at present, and you can ask us to delete them |
On your iPhone, history stays until you delete it, delete the app or delete your account in the app on that iPhone. Turning off saving affects only new items.
Desktop app history stays on your computer until you delete it, clear it in Settings → Data & privacy, or delete the app's data folder. If your computer runs very low on storage, it may also be cleared automatically. Web app history stays in your browser until you delete it, clear it, or clear the site data for app.sayoo.me. Your browser may also clear web app data on its own, for example when storage runs low, in some browsers after you haven't visited the site for a while, or when you close a private window. So export anything important. Signing out and deleting your account don't delete this history, and on a Mac, moving the desktop app to the Trash doesn't delete its data folder. Clearing history, signing out and deleting your account also don't remove the settings and photo text recognition models that the web and desktop apps keep on your device. They're normally removed only when you clear the site data for app.sayoo.me or delete the desktop app's data folder, though they may also be cleared automatically like history, and withdrawing summary consent removes the consent ID stored on your device.
7. Deleting your account
In the iPhone app, go to Settings → Account → Delete account. To protect your account, you'll confirm with your password or by signing in again with Apple, and then type DELETE.
In the web or desktop app, go to Settings → Account → Delete account, then enter your current password and type DELETE. The web and desktop apps can currently confirm your identity only with a password, so only accounts that use an email address and password can be deleted there. If you sign in with Apple, delete your account in the iPhone app or contact us (see Section 13).
We delete your account data from our servers, including:
- your profile, sign-in identities and sessions;
- usage records;
- summary consents and any pending results.
Running translation sessions are stopped.
If you delete your account in the iPhone app, that account's history and any pending requests on that phone are erased. If you delete it in the web or desktop app, that account's history in that browser or on that computer is not erased.
Wherever you delete your account, its web and desktop app history can't be viewed or cleared in Sayoo afterwards. So before you delete it, sign in to that account in each browser and desktop app you've used, and export or clear its history in Settings → Data & privacy. If you've already deleted your account, the only way to remove that history is to clear the site data for app.sayoo.me in your browser or delete the desktop app's data folder. This also removes the history, sign-in and settings of any other Sayoo account in that browser or on that computer, and you should quit Sayoo before deleting the data folder. History on any other iPhone where you used Sayoo is not affected; delete it there, or delete the app. Copies already in your device backups are not affected.
If you sign in with Apple and delete your account in the iPhone app, we first ask you to confirm by signing in with Apple once more, and we then revoke Sayoo's Sign in with Apple authorization for your Apple account. Deleting your account in the web or desktop app doesn't revoke this authorization automatically; you can stop using Sayoo yourself under Sign in with Apple in your Apple account settings.
What we keep, and why:
- a record of the deletion request (a hash of its ID and its status), so the app can confirm the deletion finished;
- the encrypted token needed to revoke Sayoo's Sign in with Apple authorization, kept only until the revocation is complete;
- if copies exist in our server backups, they are kept until those backups are deleted.
8. Your choices and rights
- Use offline mode (iPhone app) to keep speech and translation entirely on your phone.
- Withdraw consent to cloud processing in the iPhone app under Settings › Cloud AI Processing. After you withdraw, Sayoo won't send your speech, text or text in photos to the cloud until you agree again; on-device mode keeps working. Content already sent and usage already recorded are not undone.
- Control permissions. In the iPhone app, control the microphone and camera in iOS Settings. Sayoo uses the microphone only after you tap to start, and the camera only when you take a photo. In the web app, manage microphone access in your browser's site settings; your browser asks you to choose each time you share audio from a tab or screen. If you use the desktop app, manage "Microphone" and "Screen Recording" (called "Screen & System Audio Recording" in newer versions of macOS) in macOS System Settings → Privacy & Security. The web and desktop apps never use your camera. On a Mac, closing the desktop app's window doesn't stop a running live translation; capture stops when you end it or quit Sayoo.
- Manage your history: delete records or export them. In the iPhone app you can also turn saving off, and in the web and desktop apps you can clear all of this account's records on that device.
- Withdraw consent for cloud summaries at any time. Processing that has already happened is not reversed.
- Delete your account in the iPhone app if you've signed in. Accounts that use an email address and password can also be deleted in the web or desktop app. If you sign in with Apple, you can also contact us to delete your account (see Section 7).
Depending on where you live, you may also have further rights:
- to access, correct or delete your information, or receive a copy of it;
- to object to or restrict certain processing;
- to complain to your local data protection authority.
To make a request, contact us (see Section 13). We may need to verify your identity before acting on it.
9. Children
Sayoo is not directed to children under 13, or the higher minimum age that applies where they live. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.
10. Security
- All traffic between the iPhone, web and desktop apps and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS and secure WebSocket). The web app also uses HSTS and a Content Security Policy that allows scripts only from our own server.
- Passwords are stored as salted hashes, sign-in tokens are stored as hashes, and short-term recovery copies of requests and results are encrypted.
- The database file is restricted to the service's own system account and our server administrators. The database is set to overwrite deleted records where the database engine allows, but older copies can remain in backups until they are deleted. The API can be reached only through our encrypted gateway.
- On your phone, sign-in credentials live in the iOS Keychain and history is protected by iOS data protection.
- In the desktop app, sign-in credentials are encrypted with the macOS Keychain. History and settings are not separately encrypted and are kept in the app's data folder in your user account, so we recommend turning on disk encryption such as FileVault.
- In the web app, sign-in credentials, settings and history are kept unencrypted in your browser's storage for app.sayoo.me, where anyone who can use that browser may be able to read them. On a shared or public computer, clear your local records in Settings → Data & privacy before you sign out. To leave nothing behind, clear the site data for app.sayoo.me after signing out, or use a private window.
No system is perfectly secure, but we work hard to protect your information and to keep as little of it as we can.
11. Our website and web app
The Sayoo website (sayoo.ai and sayoo.me) provides information about Sayoo. It does not require an account or ask you to submit personal information, and it does not use cookies for advertising or analytics. Like any website, the web server receives the information your browser sends to load a page, such as your IP address and browser type. sayoo.me is served from our own server, which is set up not to keep access logs of these visits; sayoo.ai is hosted by Cloudflare, which handles this information under its own privacy policy.
The Sayoo web app (app.sayoo.me) requires you to sign in, and the rest of this policy applies to it. The web app doesn't use cookies. Instead, it uses your browser's local storage to keep you signed in and to store your settings and history (see Section 2). Its pages, scripts and API are served from our server in Hong Kong, which is likewise set up not to keep access logs of page visits. Apart from downloading photo text recognition models from jsDelivr and opening Apple's sign-in page if you choose Sign in with Apple, the web app itself doesn't connect to other third-party servers; for browser features such as read-aloud, see Section 2.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Sayoo evolves. When we do, we'll change the dates above. For significant changes, we'll also let you know in the iPhone app, the web app or on our website before they take effect. If we introduce paid features in the future, we will update this policy before they launch.
13. Contact
Zhang Zhixing Jinzhong, Shanxi, China Privacy contact: support@sayoo.ai